


Get In The Car

by shamusandstone (theleaveswant)



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Bruises, Community: elle_luke, Gen, Moose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-06
Updated: 2009-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:51:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/shamusandstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke, hitchhiking alone after Sylar ditched him, gets picked up by a weird girl in a green Smart car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get In The Car

**Author's Note:**

> Luke sticks out his thumb without looking when he hears the car coming. He keeps walking, expecting it to roll on by like the other half-dozen vehicles he's seen since Sylar left him at that boarded-up diner. He's so taken aback when the avocado green Smart car pulls onto the shoulder ahead of him that he spends a full minute just staring at it. The driver's side window whirs down and a blonde woman leans her head out, staring back at him and looking unimpressed. The sunlight slanting low through trees, dust and swirling insects lights up her hair like a halo.

The first words out of her mouth when Luke staggers up to the window are "What happened to your face?"

"I walked into a door," he says, and although it's been years since he said them the words pour out of his mouth smooth and easy. Just like riding a bicycle. He knows he looks awful; sunburnt, right side of his face going purple and puffy, smeared with blood from his temple and the flies biting tiny chunks out of all his exposed skin. He doesn't flinch or try to hide the damage, confronts her pretty face with his bulldog-ugly mug and wills her equally hard to take pity on him and to leave him to his private misery.

"Right," she says. "What'd this door tell you his name was?"

"Excuse me?"

"I know who did that to you. I've been following him. What I need to know is, what's he calling himself?"

Luke steps back from the car, starts walking again, gathering heat in his fists. She pulls partway back on to the road, drives alongside him.

"I'm going to catch up with him," she says, leaning across the centre console.

"In that case you should keep driving and not waste time talking to me."

"Oh, I'm not in any hurry. I just want you to know that I can find him without you. You're not protecting him by refusing to talk to me. I don't know why you'd even want to, considering he just beat you up and dumped you on the side of the road, except that it's what I'd do if I were in your place."

"Who are you?" Luke stops. The car stops too but it takes longer, rolling ahead another yard with momentum. "Are you one of those agents?"

"Hardly." She purses her lips, considering. "We used to date. Well, it was more like one date, a couple of years ago, and then he found out I wasn't an angel. We didn't talk for a while after that. We reconnected a few months ago and things were good for a bit, until he killed me."

"He killed you." Luke waits for the punchline but she doesn't provide one. "You're insane."

"Not as much as I used to be. Or more now than ever, I'm not really sure. What name is he using?"

"Sylar. What other names might he have used?"

She doesn't reply, just nods. He half expects her to tear off down the road now that she has her answer, but she doesn't.

"Get in," she says, eyes forward. "I'll drive you home."

Luke looks around. In the few minutes that they've been talking the sun has dropped below the tree line and it's getting dark fast. He hasn't seen any signs in ages, has no idea how far it is to the next town or, for that matter, whether there even is one.

"I don't want to go home."

"Then I'll drive you wherever. Where do you want to go?"

A voice in the back of Luke's mind warns him not to accept rides from strangers. A second asks what he's got left to lose while a third speculates on how far her generosity will carry him. "Niagara Falls?"

"Ooh, very romantic. Unless you're planning to go over in a barrel. Okay. Hop in quick before this thing fills up with bugs."

"I didn't know dead chicks drove Smart cars," he prods as he carefully buckles his seatbelt.

She shrugs. "It's electric. You never need to stop and refuel it."

Luke frowns. "That's not how they work."

"Let me rephrase," she holds out one hand, blue sparks dancing over her palm and between her fingers, "_I_ never need to stop and refuel."

Luke scrutinizes her. Okay, Sylar killed people and took their abilities, and okay, he had an ability like that one. But that doesn't make her story more credible, doesn't mean he killed her. There could be loads of electric people out there. Of course that either means he's driving with a liar, or with some kind of zombie. After this shittiest of shitty days, he doesn't know which he'd prefer. No, scratch that. He'd prefer a liar because then he wouldn't have to feel weird about feeling jealous that Sylar didn't kill him too.

"Do you do cold too?" She flicks on the headlights.

He doesn't ask how she knows about his heating power. "No."

"Pity. I was going to suggest that you ice that face, though it's probably too late anyway."

He shrugs. "I've had black eyes before."

She snorts.

"Actually that's not the worst of them," he admits. He doesn't know why, doesn't understand what's compelling him to talk to her, trust her, why he climbed inside her little toy car instead of melting it around her.

His confession slides right by, though; she's busy squinting ahead into the falling night. "The heck?"

He follows her gaze, blinks at the hazy shape of a moving object drawing towards them through the headlight's beam.

"Is that like a deformed horse?"

"It's a moose," Luke says, twisting in his seat to watch it fall behind, still trotting calmly up the two-lane's centre stripes. "Just a baby." He feels suddenly sad, thinking of his mother back at home, a serial killer driving around in her stolen car. He shakes it off.

The blonde driver glances at the woods around them, suspicious, nervous. "Are there more of them?"

"Let's hope not. Those things are like hairy tanks; you hit one and we're dead."

She smirks. "Wouldn't that be novel."

Luke settles back down in his seat. "You'll have a lot worse than bruises, is all I'm saying."

"Bruises aren't so bad. They heal up, fade away until there's no trace, just fresh raw skin waiting to be hurt again. Unless you hit the same spot too many times, too close together. Then it toughens up, like leather, and the bruises don't show anymore. They're still there I guess, technically, but you can't see them."

"I'll remember that."

She reaches across to the glove compartment and pulls out a bag of red licorice, which she offers to him before sticking a piece in her mouth. He's starving so he grabs a whole handful.

"My name's Luke," he says in case she doesn't know.

She talks around the candy, which bobs like a barrel approaching a waterfall. "Nice to meet you, Luke. I'm Elle."

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers to 3x18. Written for the elle_luke [challenge #2](http://community.livejournal.com/elle_luke/7483.html) prompt "bruises". Warning for offscreen violence, bug bites, vague allusions to domestic violence. Takes some inspiration from Kim Barlow song of the same name.


End file.
